Welcome to GA!
Intro to (SEO)
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While we wait, set your chatbox to “All Panelists and Attendees” and introduce yourself! We want to know who you are, where you’re joining
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Ama Gordon
CEO & Co-Founder,
www.linkedin.com/in/ama-gordon
● Brand Marketer
● Digital Marketing Instructor, General Assembly
● Podcast, Career Gems For The Journey
● French + Travel + (Pre-COVID) Gym Rat
22| © 2020 General Assembly
What is General Assembly?
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General Assembly is a pioneer in education and
career transformation, specializing in today's most in-
demand skills. We foster a flourishing community of
professionals pursuing careers they love.
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What We Teach
Coding UX & Design Data
Marketing Business Career
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Development
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Intro to (SEO)
Getting Started
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Class Participation: Chat and Q&A
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Where We’re Headed What to Keep in Mind
What We’ll Cover So We’re on the Same Page...
● What Is Search? ● This is an intro class, so we’re going to be
● What Is SEO? working from a foundational level with more
● SEO Tactics of a bird’s-eye view of the field.
● On-Page Tactics ● There will be time at the
● Securing Backlinks end for Q&A.
● You’ll receive the recording and slides within
1-2 business days
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Learning Objectives for Today!
‣ Identify factors that affect a page’s Google ranking.
‣ Describe the relationship between keywords, content, and SEO.
‣ Plan content strategies to improve page rankings for selected keywords.
‣ Use a tools for site audits and backlink identification.
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WHAT DOES IT MEAN TODAY?
Search Engine Share - 2017
Google: 79.88%
Bing: 9.9%
Yahoo!: 8.34%
AOL: 0.84%
DuckDuckGo: 0.41%
Other: 0.62% Google Bing Yahoo! AOL DuckDuckGo Other
2019 – A YEAR IN SEARCH
‣ WHAT IS SEARCH?
PEOPLE ARE SEARCHING FOR…
MICRO-MOMENTS
MICRO-MOMENTS
INTRODUCTION TO SEO
WHAT IS SEO?
‣ WHAT IS SEARCH OPTIMIZATION?
DICHOTOMY OF THE “SERP”
USAGE STATS
• 85% of SERP clicks are for organic
listings
• 86% of searchers trust organic
more than paid listings
• positions 1, 2, 3 bring in 61% of
organic search
• In 2015, mobile search outpaced
desktop
Discussion: Ranking Factors
What factors are considered when ranking
search results?
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Four Most Important Search Factors According to Google
Google considers 200+ factors when ranking sites. We have some ideas of what those factors are, but we
don’t know precisely how they weigh into the final ranking.
● Backlinks (most important!)
● Content
● Behavior metrics (time on site, pages per visit)
● Technical (how a site is structured and tagged)
What is SEARCH going in the (near) future?
RankBrain is the application of AI to understand what signals are
most important for to rank based on a set of queries and
assumed user intent.
Google states Rank Brain processes only around 15% of all
queries, but SEO’s tend to believe it’s a lot more and closer to
50%.
Focus on Answering Questions, that fulfill
users objectives and reduce friction are the
1st principles that help deliver on being
able to achieve these objectives.
*searchengineland.com engineer interview 3/24/16
INTRODUCTION TO SEO
HOW IT WORKS
How Search Engines Work
Crawl Index Rank
1 2 3
What Are The Crawlers Looking For?
Digital Marketing
On-Page SEO
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META DATA
Meta Data
Examples
• page title
• meta description
• h1
• h2
• body/content
• alt tags
Header Tags
● Your <h1> should be unique.
● You should have only one <h1> per
page.
● The <h1> should define the content on
the page.
● Header tags should operate in a
hierarchy (<h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc.).
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Alt Tags
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ON-PAGE
Meta Data
Examples
Tag/Element Best Practice Character Limit
Primary + Secondary
Title tag Keyword; Importance left to 60-70 character
right; branding
Call to action with verbs,
Meta description 155 characters
primary keywords
H1 Reinforce primary keyword N/A
H2 Reinforce secondary keyword N/A
Body/content Leverage primary + secondary N/A
keywords naturally
Alt tag Written for visually impaired 3-5 words
On-Page SEO
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SITE STRUCTURE
Homepage
Category 1 Category 2 About
Best Practice:
• intuitive
• shallow Sub- Sub-
Category 1 Category 2
• siloed
Product 1 Product 2
Product 3
IMPROVE SITE SPEED
Site Speed
Google research says…
40% of users will
bounce if your site
doesn’t load in 3
seconds or less.
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
SITE STRUCTURE
Robots.txt
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /cart/*
Disallow: /admin/*
Allow: /cart/wishlist
Source: http://ethicalweb.blogspot.com/2013/09/is-using-robotstxt-file-tutorial-for.html
Digital Marketing
SEO and Content
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SEO and Content Must Work Together to Get Results
TECHNICAL SEO: CONTENT MARKETING:
What bots see What humans see
Does this page load
quickly on all devices? Is this page about what I
thought it was going to
What is it about? be about?
Does it seem legit? Do Is it valuable to me?
people spend time on it
and link to it? Do I want to share it or
link to it?
Do people leave
immediately after they Will I spend time on it
come? and come back to it?
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The Content Marketing Honeycomb
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Real Cases: Monster Career Advice
Monster’s blog, Career Advice, focuses on
industry news, as well as tools that give job
seekers an edge.
22% of unique visitors to Monster entered through
content in 2016, says @EditorStahl. #CMWorld
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Ok, so how does this relate to content and SEO?
Understanding Intent
Searcher Query:
“how to publish a Should I get an
book?” How much
agent commission do I get
Objective:
information
book
Marketing budget for
publishing
Self publishing vs… book launch
Non-fiction author
book deals
Think About Relatedness
CONTENT
Searcher Intent Valuable Keywords Blog Topics
Recommended
Informational
Topic
1 1
What should I wear to a tail
gate?
What should I wear for the
upcoming big game? 2
What should I wear to a
pep rally?
There Are Tons of Tools
Digital Marketing
Off-Page SEO
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Great Content Leads to More Link Juice
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WHAT MAKES FOR A GOOD BACKLINK?
‣ The SEO value of a backlink can be assessed based on the
referring site’s domain authority or trust flow.
‣ Domain Authority (goal of +30): moz.com
‣ Trust Flow (goal of +10): majestic.com
‣ Investigate your competition to identify new backlink
opportunities.
‣ Relevance: Aim for backlinks from related sites and avoid
backlinks from unrelated sites.
‣ Probability of earning a backlink: Medium-sized and
niche sites often provide great opportunities.
Off-Page SEO
Volume: Your number of backlinks should increase over time.
Authority: The sites that link to you should have authority.
Velocity: There should be a steady flow of new backlinks.
Anchor text: Use your brand name and target keywords in
anchor text for links.
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Backlink Acquisition Tactics
Content Marketing
Guest Blogging
Ex: Tools/Consultations
Influencers/
Public Relations
Social Media
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How to Acquire Backlinks
● Create pages (content and products) worth linking to.
● Reach out to relevant publications with something
valuable to offer.
● Build relationships with site owners and influencers in
your industry.
● Create win-win relationships by helping other site
owners.
● Simply ask!
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Real Cases: Link-Building Tactic: Content Marketing
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Learning Objectives Key Takeaways
● Identify factors that affect a page’s ● SEO relies on technical optimization,
Google ranking. content, and backlinking.
● Describe the relationship between ● Great content provides real value to the
keywords, content, and SEO. customer.
● Plan content strategies to improve ● Backlinks are essential to SEO, but you
page rankings for selected keywords. want good ones with high Domain
● Use a tool to identify backlinks and Authority.
their page ranking. ● Integrate keywords into on-page tags.
● You can see on-page tags in bulk with
tools such as Screaming Frog.
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Intro to (SEO)
Q&A
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THANKS- KEEP IN TOUCH!
Ama Gordon
[email protected]
For other classes I teach: https://generalassemb.ly/instructors/ama-gordon/23789
www.linkedin.com/in/ama-gordon
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